POST-TRIBUNE (Merrillville, Indiana) 10 May 08 It really is a jungle out there. Ack! (Mark and Christin Lazerus)
This week: Mark learns it really is a jungle out there.
The tremors coursing through my body had less to do with the violent lawnmower I was clutching than the creeping terror I was feeling.
Not even the sight of Christin, ludicrously armed with a splintered-off fence picket and a scowl, poised to strike at any moment, could lessen my horror.
There was a freakin' snake in my front yard. A snake! In the suburbs! I didn't sign up for this. Nobody told me there'd be snakes. Snakes? Snakes! Ack!
A snake! In my yard! What is this, the rainforest of Highland? Did I buy a house in ancient Egypt? On a clear day you can practically see the Sears Tower from here -- what on earth is a snake doing in my yard?
I had truly never seen a snake outside of the zoo or an aquarium. I was ready to move back to the apartment.
The slimy, slithering savage was about 2 1/2 feet long, dark with a bright orange line down the side -- a racing stripe designed to improve its speed as it attacks me and goes for the kill, I presume.
Christin was a bit freaked, too, but told me to calm down. It's a skinny little garden snake, she says.
Right. Until its jaw unhinges and I spend the next 30 years being slowly digested in its evil little bowels. I've seen the Far Side cartoon where the little old lady is rocking away in her chair inside a smiling snake. Gary Larson wouldn't lie to me.
So after the thing skittered off to the edge of the yard, I called my mom, because, well, as previously mentioned ad nauseum in this column, I'm kind of a pansy. (Really, I'm not exactly painting a very flattering picture of myself every other week, am I?)
"Oh, it's just a garden snake," she says. "I used to pick them up and chase your uncle around the house with them."
OK, now I've learned two things. One, there are snakes in the suburbs. Two, my mother is a psychopath.
After that useless conversation, Christin used her mighty chunk of fence and I used the lawn mower's volume to scare the snake into the neighbor's front yard.
But before I could say, "Ha-ha, suckers!" it was back, sliding an inch or two past my foot in the back yard moments later. It was attacking me from all sides now.
Our barbecue/poker night that evening consisted of me standing on the deck or standing inside the house, shrieking girlishly when chasing a Wiffle ball onto to the jungle, er, lawn.
The next day, minutes into trimming the weeds in the back yard, I saw another one. A smaller one, this one with a yellow racing stripe.
Needless to say, the weeds are all still there. I went inside. Quickly.
That was Monday. I haven't stopped freaking out since -- as Christin and the rest of the Post-Tribune newsroom will surely tell you. I've pretty much morphed into Samuel L. Jackson, minus the cool.
"I have had it with these (you-know-what) snakes in this (you-know-what) yard!"
Indeed, I have snakes on the brain.
Better there than wrapped around my neck, I suppose.
It really is a jungle out there. Ack!